Monday, April 6, 2015

Understanding the psychology of tragedies need not involve knee-jerk prejudice

This
is a re-post of a piece first written for 'The Conversation' and availableherewith the title "There are some
people that commit ‘murder-suicide’ but they are extremely rare".

It
seems beyond doubt that the co-pilot of Germanwings flight 4U9525 made a conscious
decision to destroy the plane and kill the passengers. As with all other
“murder-suicides”, this is a psychological phenomenon that demands an
explanation, and action to prevent future tragedies as far as that is possible.

But it’s not simple –
and while it is entirely right to understand the psychological make-up of the
young man who appears to have been responsible it’s not as simple as blaming
“mental illness”, much less “depression”.It is very rare indeed
to be a victim of a murder-suicide event and in those rare circumstances where
risk is associated with mental health, it’s almost always associated with the
risk to the person with the mental health issue, whether from their own actions
or from violence directed at them by other people. Murder-suicide events should
be seen as related to a specific individual and their particular circumstances,
rather than simplistically explained in terms of a person “having a mental
illness”.Of course these types
of actions can each be very different. It can involve family members or those
close to or known to the perpetrator – for example colleagues or classmates. Others might involve
strangers and, in the case of Andreas Lubitz on the Germanwings flight,
probably a mix of both. Some actions may be more detached than others, for
example the use of a gun or in this case an action from a closed cockpit. Each
tragedy is unique.

However we do know
some things about why people violently attack others and then end their own
lives. We know from the other (admittedly very rare) murder-suicide events,
that these attacks are usually carried out by young men (young men are, in our
society, much more likely to be aggressive), a sense of alienation and
resentment against other people and society (often fuelled by very real
prejudice and unjust social circumstances), a sense of disillusionment and
hopelessness, and attraction towards notorious glamour – often, ironically, fuelled by the kinds of headlines that I and
my colleagues in mental health resent. And of course ready access to lethal
weapons.Some of these emotions
and belief systems are recognisably similar to the misery suffered by many
millions of people who, of course, have no intention to harm themselves or
others (even if they occasionally take a few days off work, seek professional
help or even seek a medical solution). It’s disrespectful and discriminatory to
suggest that, because people in these violent, alienated or resentful frames of
mind have some similarities with people in more understandable distress,
depressed people should not be allowed to fly passenger jets (as the Daily Mail and Piers Morgan have
implied) or that “depression” or “mental illness” can somehow explain these
events.

James Ogloff, a
psychologist and the director of Swinburne University of Technology’s Centre
for Forensic Behavioural Science, has said that those who commit
murder-suicide “have more in common with a suicidal person than a murderer” –
but we know of course that the vast majority of the more than 800,000 people who take
their lives each year have no intention of taking other lives. Murder-suicide
events suggest, then, people “particularly resentful and angry against society
broadly, or against a particular organisation”.In circumstances when
these kinds of events do happen we need to be clear about how rare they are and
create a culture whereby people struggling with mental health problems will
feel comfortable with sharing those ideas with their friends, their relatives,
their colleagues and their bosses.

Identifying alienation
and intent

In the US and in other
countries, there have been instances of murder-suicide events in places such as
schools. Last year Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured another 14 in
Isla Vista, California before turning his gun on himself. Such actions affect
the more than those directly involved, particularly the familiesof those who decide to kill others before themselves.Part of the enormously
complex picture here is the ready accessibility of lethal weapons. That’s why
America, with its culture of domestic gun-ownership, suffers disproportionately
from these kinds of tragedies. In the Germanwings tragedy, it does appear at
first sight that the co-pilot used his aircraft as a weapon (something we know
is not impossible).

But it doesn’t really
make sense to suggest that we would be protected if people with mental health
problems were prevented from obtaining pilots’ licences. To proceed down that
route seems impractical – we wouldn’t want to identify common and, in this
context, irrelevant mental health issues (such as “depression”), since they are
only tangentially related to this kind of behaviour. In any case, these are
routinely screened for.

What we would have to
do is identify young men with a sense of alienation and resentment against
other people and society, a sense of disillusionment and hopelessness and the
intention to kill others in a bid for notoriety. We should all be on our guard for
such traits, though demonising people with mental health problems will not
prevent this kind of event from happening.

So what should – what
could – we do? I think we should encourage people to be open to their mental
health and psychological well-being, and to seek help when necessary. We all
share idiosyncrasies in our psychological make-up, and all of us experience
problems from time-to-time which, when serious, get labelled as “mental health
problems”. But these have nothing to do with the rare actions of mostly lone individuals.Perhaps most
importantly, we should also look to common-sense security precautions. Many
airlines have introduced new security regulations to ensure that there are at least two members of the
flight crew on the flight-desk at any one time. This is a perfectly reasonable
response. It remains to be seen what else could have been done by the airline
to prevent this terrible tragedy but there will no doubt be a close
investigation and intelligent recommendations. These recommendations may well
include calls for greater openness and acceptance of psychological issues and
those mental health problems that are common to all of us.

2 comments:

If mental health were to be solely responsible for the actions of people who comit murder and other henus crimes then no one would ever be criminally responsible for their actions or go on to be prosedcuted would they? However, mental health issues must play a big part in some of the actions and decisions that these people make as we often hear the phrase "they can't have been in their right state of mind". If this is the case, is this state of mind that is talked about anything to do with mental health issues or is it just that... "a state of mind"? Having spent the past 13 years with an abusive husband (who is a Police Officer). It amazes me how he has managed to live with an undiagnosed mental disorder and continue to do his job. He has spent most of his life as a Jekyl and Hyde. Fooling absolutely everyone around him. Are people like him mentally unwell or just very clever people adept at using mental and physical abuse and pain to get their own way. How I wish I could step into the minds of others and see exactly what is going on inside......